Kulti

by Mariana Zapata

  That was interesting. “Really?” Jenny and I both asked at the same time.

  Genevieve nodded. “Yeah. For security or something like that, I think. It was an agreement his management and the owners had to come to before he took the job. At least that’s what my friend in the office said.” She didn’t have to be specific about who he was. “Too many psychos would lose their crap and try to come watch him for free.”

  That made way too much sense.

  I eyed the German sitting at the far end of the bench from a side-view. What would that be like? To have psycho fans that would stalk you, or possibly be such a danger to you, that an entire association had to agree to not post times you’d be present without putting you at risk? I couldn’t imagine that. I didn’t want to. The simple idea of it made me feel claustrophobic.

  He was just minding his own business, living his life, and…

  Poop.

  I faced forward again to watch what was left of the game.

  We won. Again.

  After the two teams high-fived each other in good sportsmanship and we congratulated each other for kicking ass, we were all ready to leave. There was still some equipment around the field we’d finished using and I wasn’t one of those people who just pretended not to see it and left. It made me feel bad, so I went ahead and started grabbing things, helping the rest of the staff along with a couple other players that hadn’t immediately taken off.

  “Thanks for helping out,” Gardner called out as we walked right past each other, me heading toward the bag as he walked away from it.

  I nodded at him. “Sure, G.” My parents hadn’t raised me to be a lazy ass.

  There was a sudden loud yell—a scream really. High and just barely distinctively male, it made my ears hurt at the same time it embarrassed me because it was almost deranged-sounding. Sure enough, the noise had originated from way too close. A man was halfway on the field, his gaze locked on the six-foot-two retiree about ten feet away from me, shoving dirty towels into a bag.

  I watched as the man let out another shriek—it was a happy one, I guess—and took two baby-bird steps forward before stopping again.

  “Kulti?” he wavered the name, and then he went charging.

  I’m sure I stood there with my mouth open in awe as Kulti took it all in stride, smiling gently for what had to be the first time I’d ever seen—possibly ever?— and made it seem like it wasn’t a big deal at all that this guy was flipping out. I didn’t stare, but I kept an eye on them, watching as Kulti talked to his fan in a low voice, signed something the man presented him, and gave him a handshake while the remaining players finished putting equipment up. Out of the corner of my eyes, I watched as he looked around the field. There were only four other people; one coach, two other players and me.

  He still kept on looking around like someone would magically appear. Over the course of the next five minutes, he glanced up five more times. It was finally on the last look-around that I sighed and realized what he was doing.

  He was searching for help.

  By the looks of it, no one else in the general vicinity seemed to be catching on, or they just were unwilling to help. That little voice in my head that seemed to be my conscience reminded me that if I didn’t help him I’d feel guilty later.

  Not that it made it any easier.

  One more sigh and I started walking toward the German, bag over my shoulder, hands knotted behind my back; I thought about what I was going to say to get him out of his encounter. Kulti looked up as soon as I got about halfway to him, his features calm and even as he listened the fan talking.

  I raised my eyebrows and made my eyes go wide in a ‘just go along with it’ gesture.

  He blinked in response.

  While I was a shitty liar, I could bend the truth so I wasn’t really lying… mostly. I plastered on a smile as soon as the fan saw me coming. “Hi,” I greeted him before turning my attention to Kulti. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but would you mind helping me change my tire, please?”

  Yeah, I almost winced at myself for inventing such a girly make-believe situation. I could damn well change my own tire. When I moved away from my parents for the first time, I made sure to look up an instructional video and watch it enough times that the steps were ingrained in my memory. But it wasn’t like anyone else knew that. Plus, it’d been the first thing that had popped into my head when trying to think of an excuse to save Kulti.

  There was no hesitation on his behalf when he nodded and said way too sincerely, “Of course.” The German Chocolate Cake—which I was not a fan of, for the record—turned his attention back to the other man and quickly thanked him for his support and something about it being a pleasure meeting him. Before I knew it, The King was walking alongside me across the field in the direction of the parking lot.

  I repeat, Kulti was walking alongside me.

  Poop. Poop. Poop.

  I took a mental breather and swallowed, glancing at the man next to me.

  “Don’t turn around,” he ordered in a low voice.

  All right. The ‘how about you don’t tell me what to do’ lived and died in a split second right on my lips.

  Instead, I shot him an annoyed glance.

  He happened to be looking right at me as I did it. Fantastic.

  Almost as if he could read my mind, he explained, “He’s watching. I’m sure of it.”

  “All right.” I scratched at the place behind my ear as we kept walking, stepping over the curb that led to the parking lot. “Do we need to pretend like you’re actually helping me?”

  “Let me take a look when we get to your car.” He said the longest sentence I’d ever heard from him.

  I nodded and steered him toward the little brown Civic parked on the second row. “This is me.”

  Kulti made a noise of acknowledgment as we came to my car. Popping the trunk open, I threw my stuff inside and watched him angle his body so he could look back at the field nonchalantly. I wasn’t exactly known for being inconspicuous—Eric liked to refer to me as an elephant—so I didn’t bother trying to look.

  Instead I looked at the tattoo that barely peeked out from beneath his shirtsleeve, and the small scars that had to have been edited out of all the pictures he’d had taken over the years because I’d never seen them before. I noticed the way so much red mixed with the brown of his facial hair that had started growing in. Tall and still in fantastic shape, my poor, stupid, stupid heart gave a little thump in recognition of an attractive man.

  Then I stomped it to death and reminded myself he was just a guy. I’d grown up around guys. They weren’t anything special. They were fun, funny and complete pains in the asses just like women, who were also fun and funny.

  I was fine. Totally fine.

  So maybe he had a slight accent, okay. And he’d won a few championships. Right.

  But he wasn’t a god. He hadn’t found a cure for cancer. And he’d upset my dad, even if he’d made up for it.

  I was one hundred and eighty percent fine.

  Apparently from the looks of it, his face was a little flushed. I didn’t need to glance at the field to know we were still being watched.

  “He’s looking?” I asked quietly, like his fan could hear me.

  Kulti nodded, the sunlight hitting his face just right so he looked just as young as he had fifteen years ago.

  “Okay, then let’s pretend to change my tire real quick. I have to get to work.” It wasn’t like I’d get in trouble with Marc or anything if I was late, but I still didn’t like taking advantage of him or screwing him over. The sooner we got started, the sooner we finished.

  The German made a face when I told him I needed to get to work but didn’t say another word. I got the wheel lock key out of my glove compartment, jack out of my trunk and pulled the spare out, just to be safe. Was I actually going to change it? No. But I’d go through all the steps and make it seem like we did.

  We gave each other side glances as I crouched down on the concrete, a
s he did the same. I handed him the tire iron and let him loosen a bolt.

  “I know how to change my own tire,” I felt the need to tell him for some reason, as if not knowing made me less of a person.

  Those green-brown orbs slid back over in my direction as he loosened the rest of the bolts.

  I slid the jack to him and watched as he put it under the axel.

  “Don’t turn around,” he said once he’d gone through the long act of raising the car and pretending like he was taking the bolts completely off. What a freaking actor.

  No argument or question came out of my mouth. I just crouched there with him as we pretended to change my tire for a few more minutes. Eventually he finished and we stood up. It wasn’t until then that Kulti turned around to look back at the field.

  “The coast is clear?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he responded in that low voice that caught my interest a little more than it should have.

  I nodded and lifted up my shoulders. “All right.” What was I supposed to say after that? I wasn’t sure and from the looks of it, he wasn’t either. Okay. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then,” I offered up, unsure.

  Kulti gave me a sharp nod. No thanks, nada.

  One awkward smile and two retreating footsteps, I deposited the jack and the spare into the trunk. I got into the car and let myself grip the steering wheel for a second. Just as I was pulling out of the parking lot, I looked in my rearview mirror and watched Kulti make his way toward a black car parked off the curb in the lot.

  He got into the back seat, not the driver’s.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Casillas!” Gardner yelled.

  I stopped, just like that, in the middle of the game I was in. The ball was right by my feet after I’d taken it away from one of the defenders I was playing against. Said defender was now on the ground.

  Things had gotten a little intense.

  I held my hand out to the girl and helped pull her to her feet. She knew there were no hard feelings. She’d gone for the ball at the same time I had, and obviously only one of us was going to get it. Needless to say, we both really wanted it. With only a few days left before the start of the season, we all thought we were Highlanders. At one point, I had been the one knocked to the ground, I mouthed to Jenny ‘There can be only one.’ She didn’t even bother trying to be discreet when she burst out laughing.

  But it was true, mostly.

  When Gardner didn’t get to the point, I yelled, “What is it?”

  He held up a hand before turning around, discussing something with the German. He was standing a few feet to the side and behind the head coach, facing the field I was on. Gardner’s posture changed, he leaned forward a little bit as they spoke, his hand occasionally jabbing backward for emphasis.

  I rolled the ball onto the top of my toes and tapped it into the air, bouncing it up and down.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the special edition RK running shoes coming toward me. I looked up so quickly I lost control of the ball and let it drop. Those light-colored eyes were focused in on my face, making me so incredibly self-conscious.

  How the hell had I gone from someone who didn’t really pay a lot of attention to my looks, to suddenly asking myself if I should start slapping some make-up on?

  Wait. Poop. Poop. Poop.

  We’d been squatting right next to each other when he ‘changed’ my tire, and that was close enough to see pores.

  If I could go without make-up ninety percent of the time in front of practically everyone, I could do it in front of him. Easy. I might not be the one on the team with a cosmetics deal, but I wasn’t a troll either. And if I was, so what?

  Okay, so maybe I wasn’t that above petty things, but beauty was way down the list of characteristics in life that really mattered to me. I was a good soccer player and a pretty good person. I repeated that to myself a few times before holding my head up a little higher. That mattered more to me than whether or not I had a line of men who wanted to date me.

  At least that’s what I kept telling myself.

  I took a deep breath in through my nose and took in those hazel-green orbs straight on. “Yes?”

  He tipped his head down at the ball, still looking me dead on. It wasn’t the first time I’d talked to someone who looked at others so intensely, I’d been around high-strung self-confident people who didn’t know how to communicate in any other way. “It’s better if you do this…”

  Kulti toed the ball to himself and started to move around me, making his way toward the goal as he spoke in a low voice that conveyed how tedious he found talking to be. It made sense, even if it sounded like the words were getting ripped from his throat. What he was saying and explaining made total sense. When he was finished, he kicked the ball back toward me and walked off like nothing happened.

  Reiner Kulti had just dribbled the ball around me effortlessly, despite not being able to land a few PKs recently. I’d be a liar if I said that the hairs on my arms hadn’t responded to what I’d just witnessed. Having him yell your shortcomings was one thing, but actually getting on the field and participating… Jesus Louise-us.

  I rubbed my tongue over my teeth and took it all in for a second.

  “Thanks!” I called to his retreating back.

  Was there a response? Of course not.

  “What’s that look on your face for, Sally?” Harlow asked as she walked by.

  “He just helped me.”

  She gave me an impressed look. “Your bratwurst?”

  I nodded.

  “How about that? Maybe he’s finally getting his head out of his big ass and really pitching in around here.”

  The fact that Harlow both noticed and commented on Kulti’s big sculpted butt amazed and amused me. I snorted and then I snorted again as we both took a quick peek at his retreating buns. They were pretty perfect. Time and gravity hadn’t affected them at all.

  When we both looked back at each other a good fifteen seconds later, we shook our heads and said at the same time, “Nah.”

  Some things were too good to be true.

  * * *

  One week and two preseason games later, the man formerly known as Silence of the Lambs had branched out to make exactly three other demonstrations. The second time had been again with me during another three-on-three mini-game, and the other two times had been with two of the younger forwards on the Pipers. The girls had stood there and just nodded as he moved around them. It wasn’t like I’d done much better, I shouted out a “thanks!” awkwardly both times.

  But the point no one was missing was: he was helping. It was only a little, but something was something.

  Were things still weird? Yes. No one really spoke to him except the staff—Grace hadn’t said anything to him since that argument they’d gotten into after Kulti had been ugly with the two Pipers. Mostly everyone gave him his distance and went about their way.

  But it worked. We won all of our preseason games and life kept going for each of us.

  * * *

  “See you later!”

  Jenny winked at me just as her phone rang and she took off toward her car. I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck with a sigh. Marc was already waiting for me at our next job, and I was incredibly tired. Insomnia had kicked me in the ass hard the night before, and I’d stayed up way too late watching half a season of Supernatural.

  Grabbing my bag off the turf, I swung it over my shoulder, ignoring the pain that shot through me at the movement. Most of the girls had left already after practice finished, but I’d stayed and talked to Jenny about having dinner and a movie on Saturday. We hadn’t spent too much time together off the field since practices had begun, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d hung out with another girl outside of practice. Maybe when I’d gone to the mall with Ceci almost two months ago?

  I was busy trying to remember the last time I’d spent time with someone who wasn’t Marc or Simon, my brother’s other childhood friend, when I came up to
the tall man standing at the curb in the parking lot. It didn’t take more than a single brain cell to recognize who it was, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what the hell he was doing.

  He ignored me as I walked past him. To be fair, I didn’t make an effort to say anything to him either, on the way to my car. But I dropped my stuff off in the trunk and got inside, still watching the German at the curb as he looked at his phone and then held it up to his face, over and over again. In between he looked around the lot and went right back to the phone again.

  I pulled out of the spot and thought about whether I’d feel bad if I kept going or not when he could have needed help. How many times had someone helped me when I needed it, damn it? Nerves squeezed my stomach as I pulled up alongside the curb and rolled the passenger window down, leaning over the center.

  “Do you need help?” I asked, hesitantly.

  Kulti looked up from his phone, the skin between his eyebrows already wrinkled in either annoyance or confusion that someone had stopped to do something so preposterous as to ask if he needed help. Once he saw that it was me, he just blinked. His eyebrows didn’t smooth out or anything like that, but with one last glance at his phone, he looked at me again.

  I widened my eyes but kept my gaze on him. “Yes? Or no?”

  He gave me a look I couldn’t interpret. “Could you give me a ride?”

  Could I…?

  An extra-nice person wouldn’t have asked where, but I had to get to work. “Where to?” I asked slowly.

  “I believe it’s called Garden Oaks,” was his answer. “Do you know where that is?”

  Of course I did. Marc and I worked there every other week usually. Garden Oaks was a nice neighborhood not exactly too far or too close by; and it was just that: a neighborhood. A quiet sort of expensive neighborhood—at least for my taste, and the exact area where I’d picked him up from the bar. It wasn’t where the super-wealthy resided. On my income there was no way I could ever afford to live there unless I had five other roommates.